Coach R. Clair Oleen will enter his 15th year at the helm of the men’s basketball program with the 2007-2008 season.

As a basketball player, Coach Oleen was a two-year starter and a captain at Barton County Community College before he joined the Swedes at Bethany.  In a Swede uniform he earned All-KCAC, All-District 10 of NAIA, and All-Lutheran honors nationally.  He was a Bethany co-captain for the 1976-77 KCAC co-champion team, while he also received the Most Valuable Swede award.  Following his college playing days, Oleen received numerous AAU basketball awards, including induction into the Kansas Independent Basketball Tournament Hall of Fame.

He received the B.A. degree in 1977 from Bethany College, and the M.S. in physical education from Kansas State University.

Coach Oleen was the Bethany College men’s basketball assistant coach in 1979-80 and 1980-81, when the Swedes garnered two KCAC championship titles.  He then took over the leadership of the women’s basketball program, amassing a 208-123 record in twelve seasons (1981-93).  During his tenure there were ten NAIA playoff appearances and numerous national rankings, as the program attained national prominence.

Oleen has brought the same dynamic and effective leadership to the men’s program.  He continues to demonstrate the same personal, caring and knowledgeable concern for the welfare of each of the young men in the Swede basketball program.  His work and persistence have paid off, as the Swedes have been in the upper echelon of the KCAC in recent seasons and are becoming nationally prominent.  The 1998-99 team and the 1999-2000 teams both won the KCAC post-season tournaments and received bids to the NAIA National Tournament. 

The 2002-03 men’s team went further in the NAIA-II National Tournament than any other previous team.  The Bethany College men’s basketball team and head coach R. Clair Oleen, as the year 2003 “NAIA-II National Championship  Runner-up Team,”  was honored with a state proclamation presented in the Governor’s office on Thursday morning, April 10, 2003.  The Bethany basketball team was the national champion runner-up of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics division two, in a game played March 18 in the Branson area of Missouri.  Coach R. Clair Oleen was named the NAIA-II “National Coach of the Year.”  The Bethany Swedes were unseeded and unranked in the national tournament, but they had won the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference post-season tournament to qualify.  Bethany men won all their games until the national championship tilt.  Bethany College, with an enrollment of 623 students, was the smallest institution in the NAIA-II national tournament. 

Coach Oleen’s teams at Bethany have ammassed 412 wins.

Coach Oleen continually insists that the reason for all the Bethany wins over the years is the fact that he has been blessed with good players, good people, and good assistant coaches.

Clair and his wife, Jerrine, have two adult children: Nathan and Andrea.